Explanation: Sporting
a surprisingly bright, lovely
green coma
Comet 252P/Linear poses next to the
Large Magellanic Cloud
in this southern skyscape.
The stack of telephoto exposures was captured on March 16 from
Penwortham, South Australia.
Recognized as a Jupiter family
periodic
comet, 252P/Linear will come
close to our fair planet on March 21, passing a mere 5.3 million
kilometres away.
That's about 14 times the Earth-Moon distance.
In fact, it is one of two comets that will make remarkably close
approaches in the next few days as a much fainter
Comet Pan-STARRS
(P/2016 BA14) comes within 3.5 million
kilometres (9 times the Earth-Moon distance) on March 22.
The two have extremely
similarorbits,
suggesting they may have originally been part of the same comet.
Sweeping quickly across the sky because of their proximity to Earth,
both comets will soon move into northern skies.